Tuesday, July 04, 2006

England Post Mortem

OK, I'm back from my holiday in sunny Egypt where I managed to catch the England games and a couple of other matches. And overall...England, like, sucked, man.They thoroughly deserved to lose to Portugal. In fact, England barely looked capable throughout the tournament and only a fortutious run of matches enabled them to get that far.For a team so blessed with attacking talent, the dull, unimaginative tactics and the tendency to hoof the ball upfield regardless has turned potential World Cup challengers into also-rans. Joe Cole, Frank Lampard, Beckham, Rooney, Gerrard...they were, let's face facts, all rubbish, all the time. Aaron Lennon was good though. But he plays for Spurs, so that's to be expected.So, who's to blame ? It's very easy to place the blame at Sven's door. So I will. He spent the entire tournament looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights. His decision to take Theo Walcott backfired as - when Owen got injured (even before as Owen too was rubbish) - he left himself with virtually no fit strikers. And, no, I haven't forgotten about Peter Crouch as much as I would like to.Anyway, here endeth the Sven era. Thank God for that.